King Hamad of Bahrain’s admission to using 'force’ is a refreshing change in
the region.

How refreshing to see an Arab government put its hand up and actually admit that it has done something wrong. The normal custom when trouble flares is for such rulers to deny any culpability and launch a crackdown against anyone foolhardy enough to raise their voice in protest.

Just think how very different the mood in the region might be today had Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, the former Tunisian president, had the wit to admit his security forces were responsible for causing Mohamed Bouazizi, a street vendor, to set himself alight. When thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in protest at the vendor’s death, Ben Ali’s knee-jerk response was to unleash his heavies, arrest thousands of activists and shut down the internet. Within days, Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution had taken root, and the president and his family were fleeing into exile in Saudi Arabia.

There was, of course, another option open to Ben Ali. He could have admitted the government’s persecution of Mr Bouazizi, and initiated criminal proceedings against those responsible. At a stroke the protesters’ demands would have been met, and a national crisis averted. But he preferred to force them into submission, with the predictable outcome that the will of the people ultimately prevailed.

It is a pattern that has been repeated throughout the region ever since, with the result that a succession of tyrants have found their repressive regimes brought to an untimely end. The latest is Yemen’s Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has been forced to stand down after three decades in power.

The one notable exception to this Neanderthal approach is to be found in the tiny Gulf state of Bahrain where, last spring, the ruling al-Khalifa dynasty faced the worst crisis in its 200-year existence, the Pearl Revolution. A 500-page report, delivered by the Bahrain Independent Commission, makes no bones about the Bahraini security forces’ use of “excessive force” during the brutal crackdown that followed, in which 40 people died and more than 1,600 were detained without charge.

The exhaustive investigation, undertaken by Professor Cherif Bassiouni, a former UN human rights lawyer, concluded that many detainees had been subjected to “physical and psychological torture”. They had been blindfolded, whipped, given electric shocks and threatened with rape in order to extract confessions.

Even by the brutal standards of the Middle East, this is a pretty damning indictment. But what has been remarkable about the report is not its exposure of the dark secrets of the regime’s torture chambers; it has been the readiness of King Hamad, Bahrain’s Sandhurst-educated monarch, to accept readily the commission’s findings, and to make a public pledge that “those painful events won’t be repeated”.

Critics of Bahrain’s Sunni Muslim ruling family will claim that the only reason they are still clinging to power is the timely military intervention of their much bigger and more powerful neighbour, Saudi Arabia. The Saudi ruling family is also Sunni, and felt obliged to act when it feared that the al-Khalifas were about to be overthrown by agitators from Bahrain’s Shia Muslim majority.

Nevertheless, the fact remains that King Hamad, having taken the initiative by establishing the commission in the first place, insisted that the report’s findings were announced at the royal palace in Manama, the kingdom’s capital, and then accepted personal responsibility for the conclusions it reached.

It remains to be seen whether the king will follow through on his promise to bring those responsible to justice. But irrespective of what happens next in Bahrain, he has demonstrated one of the more notable features of the recent unrest in the Arab world: that the region’s monarchs are far more sure-footed than its dictators when it comes to tackling mass anti-government revolts.

To date, the so-called Arab Spring has accounted for the secular dictatorships in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Yemen, and the ability of the Assad regime in Syria to cling to power remains questionable. But while the monarchies in Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Morocco have faced their fair share of pro-democracy protests, they have proved to be far more resilient. In Saudi Arabia, nationwide protests soon petered out after King Abdullah unveiled a £22 billion social welfare package. The rulers in Jordan and Morocco, meanwhile, have responded by committing themselves to wide-ranging political reforms.

One reason the Arab monarchies have succeeded in withstanding calls for change is that they appear to have a far closer bond with their people than the secular dictators did with theirs. Whereas tyrants such as Assad hardly have any contact with those they repress, monarchs such as Saudi’s King Abdullah grant regular audiences to the main tribal leaders. The kings are also cannier when it comes to their riches, spreading them among the tribes rather than hoarding the wealth for themselves and their families – as was the case with the Gaddafi clan in Libya and the Mubaraks in Egypt.

Even in tiny Bahrain, most of the country’s Shia Muslims are still prepared to support the al-Khalifa dynasty, so long as there is a more equitable distribution of the kingdom’s wealth and a more democratic system of government.

As the Arab revolts of early spring lead inevitably to a winter of disappointment and discontent, it is the monarchs, not the tyrants, who have the best chance of surviving the chill.